Questions tagged [history-of-science]
for questions about claims related to the history of science.
36
questions
0
votes
2
answers
291
views
Is Leon Eisenberg the "inventor" (or the "scientific father") of ADHD?
Related to this Q it's pretty easy to confirm from the meme the part that claim that Leon Eisenberg said what he said about ADHD, using e.g. his Wikipedia page where Der Spiegel is given as source for ...
6
votes
0
answers
931
views
Was the ELIZA effect real?
ELIZA is an oft referenced early chatbot developed in the 1960's. The legend behind it is that the simplistic chatbot was so convincingly human to early users that they supposedly forgot it was a ...
9
votes
0
answers
452
views
Did Archimedes really prove a goldsmith stole gold from Hiero II?
Skeptics, I'm tossing you a very old chestnut indeed. This is the story of "Eureka!", and how Archimedes sent a thieving goldsmith to the executioner. Every introductory chem class re-...
- 407
8
votes
2
answers
605
views
Was the 1755 Cape Ann earthquake widely ascribed to Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod?
Andrew Dickinson White’s book “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom” contains the following anecdote
In America the earthquake of 1755 was widely ascribed, especially in ...
21
votes
3
answers
8k
views
Was ape tool use "well known and not the least bit controversial" in 1735?
Before Jane Goodall's discoveries in the 1960s, it had been widely asserted/believed that Man was the only animal that made and used tools.
However, Frans de Waal (2016) states that in 1735,
Ape tool ...
user62611
37
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Did Rudolf Steiner prove the contagiousness of varicella in 1875?
Pages like those from the National Vaccine Information Center NVIC or the Centers for Disease Control CDC make the following claim:
In 1875, Rudolf Steiner discovered that chickenpox was infectious ...
- 44.1k
15
votes
2
answers
41k
views
Did a turkish man invent a steam engine 200 years before the industrial revolution and only made it to spin doner kebab? [closed]
I've seen this picture being reposted in many different places recently:
Is it true? Where can this machine be seen? What is it if it's not a steam engine?
Update: The pictures posted above show ...
- 3,483
1
vote
2
answers
579
views
Did Newton "invent" Physics to perform better spells? [closed]
I know Atomic Robo is not exactly an authority on real history, but there's also some truth and interesting details intermingled. How true is the statement "Newton invented Physics so he could ...
- 575
42
votes
1
answer
7k
views
Did Louis Pasteur keep a gun in the laboratory while developing the rabies vaccine?
Is it true that while developing the vaccine for rabies Louis Pasteur kept a gun in his laboratory and had instructed all his lab assistants to shoot anyone in the head who accidentally got infected ...
- 531
6
votes
2
answers
970
views
Did the Wright brothers fly 105 times in 1904?
According to the Wright brothers, the two inventors flew 105 times in 1904 (near a streetcar station called Simms, situated at the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio).
O. Wright, “Letter to Carl Dienstbach”, ...
- 237
0
votes
1
answer
356
views
Did farmers adopt cars faster than inhabitants of cities?
I learned from this post: Start with a niche that:
Cars are almost among the lucky exception to the niche rule. However, there was still one group of people in the USA that moved from horses to cars ...
- 749
78
votes
2
answers
18k
views
Did Euler make the elementary mistake √-2 √-3 = √6?
The following extract is from Tristan Needham's Visual Complex Analysis,
Even in 1770 the situation was still sufficiently confused that it was possible for so great a mathematician as Euler to ...
- 1,451
14
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Did the Catholic church prosecute Galileo because he was teaching unproven ideas?
There is a popular Youtube video, Priest Debunks Common Catholic Myths, in which Casey Cole, a Catholic and Franciscan, "debunks" the idea that the church wrongly tried Galileo.
The Church ...
- 251
1
vote
1
answer
759
views
Was Thales the first to show that the year contained 365 days?
The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, in his 2004 book A New History of Western Philosophy v. 1, Ancient Philosophy claims that Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek astronomer, was
the first to show ...
user55893
12
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Did Feynman write 'Orange Juice' as a response to Pauling's advisory on Vitamin C?
Apparently, according to the Nobel Prize's official Facebook, Richard Feynman composed a song on the congas known as 'orange juice' after fellow Nobel-laureate Linus Pauling wrote to him claiming that ...
- 363